


A Portrait of the Shogi Player as a Young Woman

by Felle



Category: Persona 5
Genre: Established Relationship, F/M, Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-15
Updated: 2017-08-15
Packaged: 2018-12-15 12:18:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,154
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11805870
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Felle/pseuds/Felle
Summary: Most of the art studios at Kosei High School are closed for the winter break—except for one. A certain painter has a slightly unconventional Valentine's Day date planned for his shogi-playing girlfriend.





	A Portrait of the Shogi Player as a Young Woman

Yusuke looked down at his palette, shook his head, and added a bit more blue. It would contrast with the warmer colors of the studio, but a clash could be just as interesting as a good harmony. He examined the lighting and nudged the table he had to work with by slow degrees until it caught the shine in a way he was satisfied with. Rather than obsess over a few centimeters, he took a long breath and slipped over to the windows, where snow was falling softly in Kosei’s central courtyard. He reached into his bag, picked out one of the chocolates that had been left at his door that morning, and popped it into his mouth while he watched the grass disappear under a blanket of white. The taste was muted, slightly bitter, but he was used to it after eating nothing else all day, and it was delicious for the thought behind it.

The door slid open behind him, and Yusuke choked down the rest of the chocolate before he turned around. His thought to mix more blue before he arrived had been on the mark, he saw when Hifumi shrugged off her coat and still had on her blazer underneath. Yusuke’s heart bounced around in his chest for a moment, stilled only by the need to focus as he walked over to her.

“Good evening,” he said quietly, and held out a hand to take her coat. Rather than wait for him to hang it up, Hifumi took a step closer to him and carefully wrapped her arms around his waist. His first reflex was to pull away, to turn inward and wonder what she was doing, but he pushed past it and settled his free hand on her back, between her shoulders. For all the chill in the air, she was very warm when she rested her cheek in the crook of her neck. “Ah—thank you again for the chocolates, I could think of nothing sweeter.”

“You’re very welcome,” Hifumi said in her demure little way as she eased back from his shoulder and rolled on her heels. “I wasn’t sure if I had made them right, but as long as you like them. Shall we begin? I’m sorry if I seem nervous, I’ve never done portraits before.”

“Then I shall do my best to put you at ease.”

He hung her coat up and guided her over to the table he’d cleared and arranged for the evening. Hifumi took a travel shogi set from her purse and began setting it up, but not without a few glances over her shoulder at where Yusuke had put his easel. “Should I be on the other side of the table?” she asked.

“No, no, this is what I intended. Please set the board to your satisfaction and make yourself comfortable. A look and pose of careful contemplation should be fine.”

“You can’t see my face from that angle,” Hifumi said, but nonetheless straightened out her back, nestled her hand under her chin, and looked intensely down at the board. “Like this?”

“Perfect, Togo- _san_.”

She turned back ever so slightly, one eyebrow cocked. “Surely we’re a bit more familiar than that?”

A low tingle ran along Yusuke’s arms, down to his fingers as he played with his sketching pencil. “Hifumi, then. I’ve simply always been rather professional with my models.”

She hummed in acknowledgement and went back to examining the shogi board. Yusuke let out a deep breath, took a moment to study the way her hair spilled down her back, and started to sketch out his base layer.

It was easy to slip back into the simple enjoyment that creation brought with Hifumi modeling for him. So many of their dates tended to dissolve into an easy, companionable silence, and Valentine’s Day seemed to be no exception. Hifumi studied the board, having arranged herself beforehand to keep from moving about, and soon he had formed the underpinnings for his piece.

His hand was steady as he switched out his pencil for his brush and mixed some of the blue paint, but it wavered as the tip hovered over the canvas. A sudden doubt lanced through him, sharp and chilling, while the first stroke down the middle of Hifumi’s blazer remained stubbornly out of reach. Was his idea foolish, doomed to failure even before he’d started? Could he call a portrait a portrait if it had barely any face to feature? Was Hifumi going to be annoyed with him for frittering their date away if she didn’t like the finished product?

Well, he decided, he wasn’t going to think his doubt away. Yusuke dug down to the same drive that had won him his last competition, mixed a dash more white on his brush, and trailed a long, bold stroke to form the crux of his piece. Soon the only noises were the occasional bumps of his palette on the counter and the squeaks of his chair as he leaned around his canvas to study the light.

Once he had the rough colors down, Yusuke dipped his brush in some water and stood on half-numb legs. “We should take a break for a few minutes, it’s not good to sit for so long.”

Hifumi got up with a sigh of relief and stretched while Yusuke took another chocolate from his bag. “You really like those, then?” she asked.

“Of course. They’re all I’ve had to eat today.”

Yusuke knew he had misspoken when Hifumi blanched and crossed her arms. “Why haven’t you eaten any _real_ food?”

“I ran out of ramen,” he said. It was true, she couldn’t begrudge him a simple fact. “My friend Sakamoto offered to treat me to a beef bowl earlier, but he stormed off when I told him I had plans.”

“Oh my goodness…you have to remember to eat, Yusuke. And more than ramen,” Hifumi said as she closed the distance to him and his easel. “We’ll go and get a proper dinner after this, all right?”

He took her hand, held it over her head, and twirled her once to wipe the frown from her face. “As you wish.”

“Don’t think I’m going to forget just because you get all romantic,” Hifumi said, though her smile belied her tone somewhat. She took another step toward the canvas. “Is it coming along well—?”

“Please, don’t look at it yet!”

She jumped back at his outburst, though not without one more curious glance at the easel. “It needs to be finished to be properly appreciated, I assure you. Maybe you could show me how you’ve arranged the board instead, you seemed very sure when you were placing the pieces.”

That assuaged her, and he followed her to the table. What pieces remained on the board were confined to one corner, while the rest were stacked neatly off to the side. “This is a _tsume_ problem, one that should mean defeat in fifteen moves. The goal is to find a way to turn the tides of battle, to make the smaller playing area an advantage rather than a problem. Our mutual friend helped me work out solutions to quite a few of these.”

“I apologize if this is terribly boring for you, staring at the board without touching it.”

“No, not at all. I’ve been playing out possibilities in my head, I know the board well enough that I don’t really need to move the tiles if I’m working on it by myself. It’s not as disruptive as my, ah, commentary, but some of my classmates think it odd when I pass lunch staring at my board and not making a move.”

“I think it’s brilliant.”

Hifumi started at that and looked up at him, then became very interested in the floor. “Flatterer…well, shall we continue?”

She took her seat again, though with her left arm in a different spot. “No, I believe your hand was here—”

Yusuke motioned toward her hand without actually touching her, but Hifumi didn’t move. Another little way to nudge him toward being more comfortable with people, he knew. For all her demurring, she was very willful when it came to getting what she wanted. He gently cupped her hand and set it back where it had been, on her leg directly above the end of her socks. “Better?” she asked.

“Yes, this shouldn’t take much longer.”

Hifumi went back to examining her shogi problem, and Yusuke dabbed a bit more red onto his palette for the background and the lighter sections of her skirt. With his brush dry, he began to work on the finer details, the interplay of light and shadow on the shogi pieces and her clothes. A few dark spots, a line of brightness across the hair spilling down her back…he paused when he leaned past the canvas and found himself hesitating to pull back. The streak of shadow was exactly where he’d put it, but Yusuke couldn’t seem to look away. Her hand still rested where he had set it, the line of her back curved almost lazily as she sat at ease, and the small flash of her cheek that he could see moved a tiny bit every few seconds when she swallowed her rolled her tongue between her teeth. The brush rolled idly between his fingers as he realized he wasn’t looking at her as a model, but as his girlfriend. Yusuke chuckled. That still felt a bit strange to think about. He’d rarely given relationships much thought before, at least until Ann had all but hit him over the head to inform him of his classmate’s interest. Well. Perhaps that was the difference, the reason trepidation had seized him at the thought of not capturing her as faithfully as possible. He smiled to himself and went back to rendering the lighting.

“Yusuke? I don’t mean to rush you, but I have to—I have to—”

She tried to be as subtle as she could about sneezing, a tiny frantic break in her composure, but she still shifted in her seat and changed the lighting that hit her. “Oh, excuse me…did I move too much?”

“No, I’m very nearly done, it only needs a finishing flourish,” Yusuke said, stippling a bit of black for depth onto the omamori knot she wore in her hair. Once the shadows were so tightly arranged that there simply wasn’t any room for more, he wiped his brush clean and checked his palette. He had set aside slightly too much red, but otherwise he hadn’t been wasteful. “There, now it just has to dry. I must confess, I’m a bit nervous. I haven’t done portraiture in months.”

“What have you been doing, then?” Hifumi asked through another stretch.

“Abstracts, for the most part,” he said coolly. Although Akira had let him know that a surprising number of people had intuited his role with the Phantom Thieves, Hifumi hadn’t ever said anything to him about it or guessed at his own involvement. Best that his inspiration from Mementos stayed quiet, in his estimation. “Considerations of the human soul. Desire, fear, hope, things of that sort.”

“How grand. I hope this can live up to that.”

Yusuke shook out his hand and looked over the canvas. “I’m sure it will. Would you like to see?”

She had been sitting patiently at her table, but had no trouble jumping up at his question and going around the easel to look. Yusuke pushed his stool back so he could stand and work the soreness out of his back. Hifumi cocked her head when she finally saw the painting, then put her hand over her mouth as she studied it. There was little of a traditional portrait in it, with almost nothing of her face visible. Instead the focus rested on the board, and each piece rendered with its kanji in bold, careful strokes. He had painted her as well, of course, but apart from the fine details—her hair decoration, the rings of color at the tops of her socks, the small star embroidered near the hem of her skirt—it could have been any woman, demurring from the viewer in favor of giving the board her full attention.

“I remembered how you said all those photo shoots your mother pushed you into made you uncomfortable,” Yusuke said, broaching the silence that had settled while she looked at the painting, “because they became more about you than the game. I tried to put the focus back where you wanted it. Though I do regret not capturing such beauty.”

Hifumi nodded, a smile breaking over her face, and leaned against Yusuke’s side as her arms wrapped around his elbow. Rather than an urge to pull away, only a rush of warmth worked through his chest, and he slowly relaxed enough to rest his cheek on her head.

“I think it’s wonderful.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks very much for reading! If you liked this, you may be interested in some of my other _Persona_ work:
> 
> [Empress’s Justice](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15770388) – Haru goes back and finds a fatally wounded Akechi in Shido’s palace.
> 
> [Fool’s Judgment](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14370858/chapters/33177117) – The lead-up to, and aftermath of, Sae’s palace if she and Joker were dating.
> 
> [High Priestess, pǝʇɹǝʌuI](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16708519/chapters/39187396) – Genderswapped (sort of) High Priestess confidant, featuring my rabid little honey badger of a female protagonist, Akane
> 
> [I Guess This Sort of Thing Really Does Happen…](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11855355) – Sae stashes Joker at Kawakami’s place following the interrogation.
> 
> [Kintsukuroi](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14760477/chapters/34131807) – Some scenes from a setting where Sae and Yusuke are an item.
> 
> [Our Last Private Moments](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16092479) (Persona 3) – Theo and his guest's last date.
> 
> [Sense Memory](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16536104) – Yusuke, whose world comes to him in impressionistic bursts and flashes, wonders if he's good enough at all to be part of the Phantom Thieves. Shukita.
> 
> [Singles’ Retreat](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16556390) – Rather than tag along with any of their friends in relationships, Haru rents out a ryokan for herself, Ryuji and Yusuke for a week. What ever shall they do to keep themselves busy? (Yusuke/Haru/Ryuji, incredibly NSFW)
> 
> [Temperance, pǝʇɹǝʌuI](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15355578/chapters/35631108) – Genderswapped Temperance confidant, featuring a romantic bent and my rabid little honey badger of a female protagonist, Akane.
> 
> [Weekends in Shibuya](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11697408) – A little future Sae/Joker piece I did for a friend when they were sick.


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